| “ | But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her loneliness, whose gates swing to and fro. To and fro they swing, and creak and creak in the wind, but no one hears them. They are of green copper, very lovely, but no one sees them now. The desert wind pours sand into their hinges, no watchman comes to ease them. No guard goes round Bethmoora's battlements, no enemy assails them. There are no lights in her houses, no footfall on her streets, she stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, and I would see Bethmoora once again, but dare not. | „ | |
| ~ ADJ: A Dreamer's Tales |
Bethmoora is a fictional city created by Lord Dunsany for his fantasy book A Dreamer's Tales. It is mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness and Hugh B. Cave's "The Isle of Dark Magic", although in the latter it seems to refer to a being, as opposed to a place (cf. Hastur, Yian, and Yuggoth).
History[]
Standing next to a desert and beyond the snowy Hills of Hap, Bethmoora is a long-abandoned city whose gates of green copper are open and castigated by sand storms. In its prime, it was separated from the desert by a narrow strip of fertile land, in which the locals planted vineyards and purple flowering bushes. The grapes were crushed in vats to make the syrabub, which was traded for turquoises and emeralds with the people of Oxuhahn. When the harvest was good, the natives celebrated by dancing and playing instruments such as the kalipac, the tambang, the tittibuk, and the zootibar.
One day, three men mounted on mules arrived at the gates and delivered a message to the people of Bethmoora which caused them to abandon their homes in silent panic, set fire to their vineyards and escape the city to never return. Some European travelers who were present at the occasion heard the message, but couldn't understand the language. Therefore, the reason for the sudden and drastic evacuation is unknown.
Many ideas have been proposed, some claiming the message came from the unseen emperor Thuba Mleen, or even from the gods themselves, either friendly gods issuing a warning or hostile ones issuing a threat. Some speak of a plague, or even assume that the three men were not messengers at all, but suffering from the gnousar sickness, which scared the population away. The most popular idea, however, is that the message came from the desert itself, which desired to claim Bethmoora.
At least one man has claimed to have visited Bethmoora in hashish dreams and to know the nature of the message. According to him, it was sent by the cruel emperor Thuba Mleen. (ADJ: A Dreamer's Tales)